When treat foods become the norm: A doctor on our childhood obesity epidemic

Just a glance at our child obesity stats shows how severely inadequate our current advertising codes really are, argues public health medicine specialist Dr Michael Hale.  There’s no such thing as a free lunch, or so the saying goes. So when a well-known fast food restaurant offered 50,000 ‘free’ burgers to consumers last month, there … Read more

‘You gotta push this through, bruv’: Watch Jamie Oliver’s sugar tax message to NZ

In a video filmed for a conference the health minister was scheduled to open but then withdrew from, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver implores David Clark to pass a sugar tax. Watch below.  Following on from the dressing down he directed at the National Party for failing to attend a sugar tax symposium last year, … Read more

How terrible food is killing New Zealand’s poor

New research from the University of Auckland reveals startling disparities in the ways communities are targeted by junk food retailers. Don Rowe speaks to the study’s author, Professor Boyd Swinburn.  A combination of political apathy and toothless local government is exacerbating New Zealand’s obesity crisis, a new study has found. We’re living in fundamentally unhealthy … Read more